The Architect
by Diane Langley
Summary: She had been inside of his head, probed his dreams. She knew why he wanted out of the dream business, and she most definitely knew why he could not be the architect. Dom/Ari. Oneshot.


**AN:** The idea for this little piece came out of nowhere, itched at me forever, and ended up being written even though it lacks polish. I don't feel like giving it any more of my time, though, since this is not my fandom. It's probably the only _Inception_ fanfiction I will ever do.

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"Why can't you be the architect?"

Time had passed as it inevitably does, and he was home now. Home was everything he had salivated over but dared not dream of for so many years. The children were wonderful, joyous and laughing, as if they had never suffered the tremendous strain of losing both a mother and a father so young. Their father was back, yes, but he was never going to be the same and things for them were never going to be the same, and yet, they never failed to have a laugh on their lips. He admired them so much, respected them so much, and he would never leave them again. He would die first. He was home; getting here should have been his last adventure, the grand journey to end up at his final destination. He was ready for that.

Adrenaline had already run his life for far too long.

Yet, here she was now, standing in front of him, asking him to dream with her. He had infected her, and now she was addicted to the adrenaline of the dream, the deception, the inception. She should be taking her skill and working in the business, making some money, saving up to eventually have a normal life or something. Dom had no idea what a gal like Ariadne should be doing with her life, he supposed, but it should not be standing here with those soft brown eyes boring demandingly into his, asking him why he could not be the architect. Especially not when she knew the answer. She had been inside of his head, probed his dreams. She knew why he wanted out of the dream business, and she most definitely knew why he could not be the architect.

He continued in his silence, pretending to ignore her question. She repeated herself. "Cobb, why can't you be the architect? I'm not asking you to run some damn job. Right here, with me, why can't you be the architect?"

"Oh, it's Cobb now," he echoed, raising an eyebrow, looking away to the kids sitting at the table doing their homework, finished dinner plates pushed forward for him to clean up later. Ariadne was standing in the kitchen doorway, between his place in front of the sink and the table where the children sat. She looked like some glowing, idealistic young mother from the movies, not like the lethally smart and well-trained dream conwoman she was and certainly nothing like the intense, dark-haired wife who had given birth to his children.

"Dom… It's Dom, okay? Dom, be the architect," she amended, voice softening now rather than demanding. He frowned at her; how dare she say it like that, letting his name roll around in her mouth like some sort of particularly tasty dessert, maybe a glazed donut hot out of the oven?

"I have to put Phillipa and James to bed," he replied, "but maybe we can talk about this later."

He made sure his tone was firm, not that that meant it would have any effect on Ariadne, but she seemed to soften further, nodding her head and going to get the kids' dishes to take them back to the sink, smiling at them as she did. He had watched her with his children lots of times since his return home; she was amazing with them when he would have least expected it. When Phillipa wanted her hair braided for school like the other little girls and Dom had been frantically on the computer trying to look up how to braid, it was Ariadne who like magic showed up at the door and fixed things. When James scraped his knee badly and little rocks had to be picked out of the wound, one by one with tweezers, he wouldn't let his father near him until he called "Ari" to come hold his hand. She had held his son's hand and whispered the story of "The Three Billy Goats Gruff" to him as Dom had slowly and carefully removed all the pebbles, washed and dressed the scrape.

He shook his head to clear out the tumbling thoughts and put on a Daddy-grin. "C'mon, Cobb children, it is bedtime, and if you manage to brush your teeth and get in your pajamas before I check this homework, I will tuck you in myself," he announced, clapping his hands together. They jumped up, giggling, and raced upstairs to try to beat Daddy. It was a game they always played, but it was always a bluff. Sure, they always beat him because he was meticulous about checking their homework, mostly because he was always impressed by how smart they were, but even if they had lost, he would never have passed up a chance to tuck them in. One day, they would be too old to let him, and then he would accept it, but now, nothing could drag him away from his chance to tuck them in.

Didn't Ariadne understand that? He had to stay out of dreams, out of subconscious, as far away from any chance of Mal coming back as possible. He had let her go, he had had to, but that did not mean he felt comfortable playing in the dreamscape and risking letting her back in. If she got back in, everything would change. His life with the children. His easy friendship with Ariadne. His ability to resist the pull of the business. It'd be lost to Mal and the hopelessness and damnation of her. Dreams were no longer a part of his reality; they could not be.

10+8=18, 23+1=24… Phillipa was smart, never missed a math problem, but she did lack the creativity of her very youngest years. He hoped a little more time home, each day he showed her he was never leaving again, would work her back to that free spirit. Once he had checked the last problem, Dom hurried up the stairs, exaggerating his footfalls as if he was sprinting in hopes of winning the game. The giggles from both bedrooms assured him he had lost, and he began with James, since he would fall asleep first.

"Son, I want you to close your eyes. No laying here, trying to stay up, like you did last night, and then being grouchy in the morning before school," Dom admonished in a voice that wasn't admonishing at all, and James offered a sleepy little grin.

"I won't, Daddy. I'm still tired from that," his voice was a soft mumble, and Dom kissed his forehead.

"Good. Sleep." Dom stood back up from where he had been seated on the soft quilted bed and gave a playfully stern look that earned him a playful salute. He walked into Phillipa's room quietly, in case she was already asleep, but there was no chance of that.

"Daddy, sit down and read me a story!" She called out as soon as his shadow fell through the doorway to her room. He chuckled and obliged the first command but shook his head to the second.

"We headed to bed too late for that tonight, Phil."

"Please? A short one?"

"No, ma'am. You have a social studies test tomorrow and you need your rest."

"Are you going to go talk to Ari?"

Dom felt suddenly taken aback, just like he did any time that the children took for granted her presence in their lives; he did not truly understand how that had happened. One minute, she was just the architecture student he picked up for a job, and the next, she was this adult woman helping him when he needed it most and expected it least. Though, he supposed, it was what she had done from the moment she had first realized he was a man who needed help.

"I was planning on it, if that's alright by you."

"Will you listen to her this time, Dadddy?"

Dom froze again. "What?"

She repeated herself. He nodded slowly. "Yes, I'll listen to her. Now you go to sleep, sweetie. I'll wake you up in the morning," he leaned down to kiss her forehead before standing up, feeling an unsettling creak in his knee that smacked of getting old, and walking out of the room.

He could already hear James' high, childish snoring from the other bedroom as he ambled down the stairs. Ariadne had an apron on, peacefully washing the dishes, but he knew better than to be fooled by the domestic motion. When she heard his footfalls, she turned to look at him with those dangerously trusting brown eyes.

"Did they settle in okay tonight?" She asked. Had he known her less well, he might have thought she was trying to butter him up to ask that same damn architect question again, but he knew better. She genuinely cared about those kids, probably even loved them.

"Just fine. Phillipa says I need to listen to 'Ari,' the same 'Ari' who started calling me Cobb again earlier," he grunted, giving her a pointed look. She cracked a soft, apologetic smile.

"You just frustrate me, Dom," she said, turning and plunging her hands back into the soapy water. "I know you could do it now. You're so happy. You could create again, build again. I bet it'd be wonderful."

He felt the strangest urge to put his hands at her hips and spin her around to face him, maybe chuck her under that chin and smile, but to still tell her no for the hundredth time.

"What you build in a dream isn't real. This life, this house and these kids and even those dishes in that water… This is real," he replied. He wished he could make her understand. But she was young, naïve in ways that he wished he still was, and she believed that confronting your fears was always the most important thing to do in damn near any situation.

"I know what's real," she whirled on him. Her hands sprayed him with flecks of dishwater. "You think I don't know what's real? I know it's real, and that's why I'm not so scared of losing it. I'm not scared that if I go into a dream, my world will fall apart and that I'll lose you and the kids. I know what's real, and I have some faith it. You're the one who won't believe in any of it."

Was that it? Was he scared that he would disappear back into the dream world and that this amazing reality would vanish as if it were the dream? Had he spent so long going back and forth between the two that he had no faith in what was real? He was so struck by the questions that his brain failed to process the strange intimacy of the words "lose you and the kids."

He wanted to believe that he believed in reality above all else; he wanted to be nothing like Mal.

"I'll do it," he replied, tossing his hands up weakly, "I don't know how it will turn out. I haven't done it in a long time."

Her eyes widened. Apparently she had never thought she would win the battle so easily. He chuckled. "Now you got what you wanted. Shouldn't you be excited?"

She laughed hesitantly, and he figured she was more nervous than she was willing to let on, considering the last time she had been in a world he created. "I'm excited, Dom. I am. Do you have a layout in mind already?"

"I have one that's good enough. I don't need to make a maze… for this." He rubbed the back of his neck, and she looked down. They had only ever shared a dream just the two of them once, and it had been accidental, just her prying into his brain. That had not been intimate like sitting down with the sedative with the intention of sharing their minds. He joined her at the sink to help her wash dishes, and in the peacefulness of the scene, he could almost pretend he was not nervous. If she had looked down, though, she could have seen his hands shaking ever so slightly. The quiet of the room and the house seemed to settle over him, and he wished she would say something. Finally, he elbowed her gently and managed a smile.

"I'm going to go dig out everything we need. Feel free to change your mind while I'm gone," he said. She smiled back, but her lower lip wavered. He recognized that she, too, was nervous. It was like a courtship ritual, two fumbling teenagers who had decided to go all the way and were so overcome with quivers that they could not get a condom on and certainly could not manage to talk about their decision. It was exactly the nervous feeling in his stomach that would result in a teenage pregnancy and shotgun wedding, except that this time, the nerves were between two adults (albeit ones of very different ages) and their decision was to meet in the murky realm of dreams.

Once the boxed sedative was in place, along with two comfortable chairs, he walked back into the kitchen. Ari was looking through a novel she had plucked from the bookshelf, one of Mal's old paperbacks. The butterflies in his stomach kicked up at the small reminder of his former wife. It should have felt traitorous to stand in her house with this other younger, more beautiful woman, but he was finally out of love with Mal. Seeing her again in the dream world she had chosen over her own family had shattered his last illusions that he had found his soulmate in her.

Ari looked up. "Are you ready?"

"Everything is all set up. Will you be the dreamer?"

"If you're the architect."

He just nodded, and they walked over to take a seat in the chair. She prepared to sedate herself first, and he watched her settle in the chair, feigning absolute calm. But then she looked up at him with her dark eyes shining.

"Do you really have Mal under control now, Dom? She won't sneak into the layout?"

He looked back down at her, and he smiled. He crouched down to look her in the eye and reached to chuck her chin lightly. "This is my world. She made her choice, and I made mine." He must have hidden his nerves perfectly because she nodded, smiled back, and went under peacefully, eyelashes fluttering against her lower lid like dark charcoal smudges. It was funny how much he come to appreciate her without ever noticing how lovely she had become; the last angles of girlhood had softened into curves, from her cheekbones to her jaws to her hips. He settled down in the chair beside her and called to mind his layout, a simple non-labyrinth he had thought up in a moment of weakness a few weeks ago, a moment when his brain begged for the creative outlet of designing a layout. He said a silent prayer to a God he did not believe in that Mal could no longer reach him.

Then he sedated himself.

Transitioning from the real world into a dream is a fuzzy, gentle process like riding a raft out to sea with the tide, and when he finally reached the other distant shore, he recognized Ariadne first before he even saw his own layout. She was standing transfixed, smiling upwards. Then he saw why. His landscape was even more captivating than he could have imagined. Deciduous trees with leaves in full autumn bloom, rich maroon, orange, and yellow, blocked out the sky above, but under their feet was soft white Caribbean sand. Raindrops hung in the air, frozen in time, like crystals decorating nature. The landscape was subtle, simple, and beautiful, and she smiled as she reached out to splash a raindrop on her hand.

"This is incredible," she murmured, looking out through the pathway of trees to see the beach, ocean, and sky in the distance. "What have you done with my projections?"

It was a piece of cleverness he was proud of; the projections lived in the layout's nearby city. There was no reason for them to feel the need to move from there to protect her unless he began to meddle with the world. "They're in a local city. Still a ways off," he replied with a smile.

"That's convenient if you are in a situation where you don't need a maze or any tricks of physics that are best hidden in cityscape," she replied, looking impressed. He chuckled. Just because little miss Ari was the most in-demand architect in the business right now did not mean she was the best; it just meant the best had retired to devote his life to his kids.

"Kinda what I thought."

They looked at each other, standing there in the quiet, and finally she crooked a finger to him, calling him over. The urge to resist never arose, so he walked toward her, closing the gap between them. She tilted her head up to him, and her eyes got misty.

"You're a good architect, Dom," she whispered, putting a hand over her mouth as she tried to hold back tears he did not understand.

"Ari, what's wrong?" He whispered, putting his hands on her shoulders and looking at her intently. He never saw the tough young lady cry. Even when things were at their worst, she just dug in, gritted her teeth, and tucked away any despair she might feel. Now, though, her eyes were watery, and he did not know what to do.

"Mal's not here. Not a trace of her. This is you…" She trailed off, and he knew there was something else unspoken in her statement. So he was not surprised when she repeated and finished the idea: "You've moved on. You're free. I've wanted that for you for so long." She started crying again, and suddenly, he did understand. Yes, Ari had wanted it for him. She had sincerely wanted to see him let go of the pain and desperation he had gripped with both hands for so long. But she had wanted it for him… and for her. She was in love with him. Suddenly it was so clear; the fight against his subconscious, the long nights helping him with the children, the quiet evenings watching TV, the calls she made to him at the last minute before she went on a job. She loved him, and if he was honest with himself, he had made those things possible because he loved her too.

He touched her chin gently and lifted it up. "If I kiss you here, is it still real?" He whispered, moving his lips towards hers. She spoke against his, fluttering lips brushing his as her words slipped out:

"Don't ask me. You're the architect."

His crafty little Ariadne had saved him. He had his children, his sanity, his life, his happiness, and the freedom to create. She was right; Mal was gone, Ari was here, and now he could be the architect of his reality and his dreams. There was nothing left to do but kiss the woman he loved.


End file.
